Russia May Take Millennium to Finish Roads Upgrade, Minister Says

By

Andrey Ostroukh

Nov 23, 2012 2:20 pm CET

It would take 1,000 years for Russia to complete the upgrade of its road system if it continued building roads at the current pace, Minister of Regional Development Igor Slyunayev told a government meeting Friday.

Russia, which occupies more than one-eighth of the Earth’s inhabited area, is striving to modernize its road network. Most of what it has now was built before the fall of the Soviet Union.

At a meeting with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, ministers discussed an upgrade of the network between 2013 and 2020. Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov voiced ambitious plans to increase the mobility of Russians by 50%, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said a few words about the financing of the project. While Mr. Slyunayev, in charge of the development of Russian regions, offered a blunt assessment of the viability of the plan, which envisages the construction of about half a million kilometers of new roads.

“The pace of construction indicates that, taking into account around 500 kilometers [of roads] are opened a year, we will have this issue solved within a thousand years,” he said.

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